More than 40 leaders of religious, veterans, human rights,
child advocacy and other organizations today
called on President Bush and the members of
the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to
support U.S. ratification of a new international
agreement to end the use of children as
soldiers.
In letters to the President and members of the Committee, the leaders stated that "United States leadership on this issue will send a clear message to governments and armed groups around the world that the use of children on the battlefield is unconscionable."
An estimated 300,000 children under the age of eighteen are currently fighting in armed conflicts in more than thirty countries worldwide. The letter states that "their ranks include children as young as eight recruited into Colombia's paramilitaries, teenaged boys forcibly taken from their villages in Myanmar to serve in the national army, and young girls kidnapped by the Lord's Resistance Army in Northern Uganda for use as soldiers and sex slaves."
The new agreement, an optional protocol on the use of children in armed conflict, establishes eighteen as the minimum age for direct participation in armed conflict, for compulsory recruitment, and for any recruitment or use in hostilities by non-governmental armed groups. Under the agreement, governments are allowed to accept voluntary recruits as young as age sixteen, but with certain safeguards, including parental permission and proof of age.
The protocol was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on May 25, 2000, and was signed by President Clinton on July 5, 2000. To date, seventy-six countries have signed the new agreement, and three have ratified. It will come into force after ten countries have ratified.
Leaders signing the letters included Kenneth Roth, Executive Director of Human Rights Watch, Rev. Bob Edgar, General Secretary of the National Council of Churches, Bob Chase, President of the National Education Association, William F. Schulz, Executive Director of Amnesty International, Bobby Muller, President of the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation, Rear Admiral Eugene J. Carroll, Jr. of the Center for Defense Information and Charles MacCormack, President of Save the Children, Marian Wright Edelman, President, Children's Defense Fund
